Eye Lake

by Tristan Hughes

  TRISTAN HUGHES

  Eye

  Lake

  Coach House Books | Toronto

  copyright © Tristan Hughes, 2011

  First North American edition

  First published in the United Kingdom by Picador, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Hughes, Tristan

  Eye Lake / Tristan Hughes.

  ISBN 978-1-55245-253-0

  I. Title.

  PR6108.U44E94 2011——823’.92——C2011-904968-6

  Eye Lake is also available in ebook format: ISBN 978 1 77056 293 6.

  For a book club guide to this and other Coach House titles, please visit www.chbooks.com/bookclubs.

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  The Phantom Shad

  Happy 100th, Crooked River

  Where the Lost Things Are

  The Bermuda Triangle

  Crooked River: Population 1

  Big Rock Candy Mountain

  Wolf Men and Circus Bears

  The End of the World

  Prairie Flowers

  Snow Creatures

  Nana’s Quilt

  Going Under

  Fallout

  X Marks the Spot

  The Blue Danube

  The Lost Highway

  Minnow Fishing

  Under the Helsinki Sky

  Everything All at Once

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To Tess and Magnus

  ‘A lake is the landscape’s most

  beautiful and expressive feature.

  It is Earth’s eye …’

  – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

  The Phantom Shad

  Iwas casting out from the eastern shore of Eye Lake, opposite the second island, when I snagged the top of my grandfather Clarence’s castle. Of course I didn’t know it was his castle at first; I just thought it was a log or a deadhead or something, but because it wasn’t far out from shore and it wasn’t that deep – just an inch or two beneath the surface – I decided I’d swim out and fetch my lure. I didn’t want to lose that lure. It wasn’t much good at catching nothing, but it looked great and had come in a box with its own name on it: the phantom shad. And that’s what it looked like too: a spook minnow, as almost-see-through white as a ghost, with two little red eyes. A bit like my best friend George McKenzie used to look when he was a kid. I’d found it in its box by the edge of Franklin’s Trail after some fishermen from Minnesota had gone through (it’s worth watching them on the trails because they drop stuff all the time and don’t seem to care if they lose it anyhow). You can always tell Minnesotans up here in northern Ontario: they’ve got bigger beards and newer fishing stuff than anyone else.

  Now it may not sound like such a big decision – to swim for the phantom shad – but it sort of was. I hate swimming in Eye Lake. Its water is brown, the colour of stewed tea, and full of weeds and slime and hundreds and hundreds of drowned trees. In the shallow bays some of them stick up out of the water, and in the deeper parts they just lurk there below the surface. (The Sunken Forest, that’s what my uncle Virgil used to call it: the forest they sank when they dammed and detoured the Crooked River to get at the iron ore. Some people call the whole place the floodwaters.) But anyway, what with all the weeds and slime and trees it’s not somewhere you’d want to dip your toe in even. I’ve caught slubes – which is what we call pike up here in Crooked River – as big as your leg in it. Hungry slubes, who wouldn’t be that fussy about eating the odd toe or two.

  So it was a tough decision but in the end I went in, holding my line in my hand, trying not to look beneath me and trying not to imagine getting my legs and arms all tangled up in the weeds and underwater branches. Only when I got to the shad I found it wasn’t snagged on any log or drowned tree or underwater branches – it was snagged on the ridge of a roof! An inch below the surface were the slimy, waterlogged boards of a roof! That really freaked me, realizing what it was, and then forcing myself to look closer and make sure it wasn’t just a boat turned upside down or something. But it wasn’t. It was the roof of a building, a thin square building like a tower. Through the brown water I could see where it fitted onto log walls, and as I kicked about with my feet trying to tread water one of them bumped against the logs and slipped into a hole that I knew then was a window. There was no doubt. It was Clarence’s castle and I’d found it.

  I guess I always knew it was down there in the lake somewhere, in a way, in the way you hear about something so many times you kind of know it must be there, somewhere. Like the Titanic. Or Atlantis. Or Bad Vermilion. But they’re never things you ever expect to actually find, let alone hook. I might as well have snagged a unicorn, or one of those sea monster things in Virgil’s book of old maps. Krakens. That was one of his jokes when he’d cast somewhere he thought there were big fish: ‘There be Krakens,’ he’d say. When I snagged the bottom he’d say (putting on a snooty English voice, like the Earl’s), ‘I do believe, young Eli, that you’ve caught Canada.’ And I do believe, old Virgil – I said to him in my head – that I’ve caught Clarence’s … and then I shut up because I realized then that Virgil must have known exactly where it was all along because he never fished near this shore, not once, not ever. It was no joking matter. I saw a show once on the history channel about the Titanic. There was all that sad stuff about the guys playing on their violins as it went down and them not having enough boats for everyone, but the bit that really stuck in my head was that it hit an iceberg because icebergs can be small above the water and big below it. Ninety percent of their mass, the presenter said … or something like that. A lot bigger. And as I floated about in the brown water I knew there must be a whole bunch more of Clarence’s castle below me, not just the tower part that I’d hooked.

  I’d seen a picture of it: a photo that my Nana kept hidden down in the basement of number one O’Callaghan Street, along with the rest of Clarence’s stuff. She didn’t like it much, I figure, but she kept it anyway and so I saw it. The castle was made out of red pine logs. It was a big barn-shaped building, about thirty feet high, with a tower at one end about forty-something high. Now I don’t know if that’s what a proper castle looks like, but it sure didn’t look like a cabin; it didn’t look like nothing built around here. And anyway, that’s what the old-timers called it: a castle, Clarence’s castle. In the photo he’s standing in front of it on a wide lawn – if you looked real close you could see flowers coming up through the grass – wearing an old suit full of rips and tears. To be honest, he doesn’t look that over the moon about finishing his castle. There’s a sad, pinched frown on his face and he seems to be staring off to the side of the photo, as if he’s expecting something, or someone, to arrive from that direction. And that’s pretty much the last photo that ever got took of him.

  I was thinking about all of this – and a lot of other things too – while I was out there in the water. Like who I was going to tell about what I’d found and how I wished I could’ve told Nana or Dad or Virgil; how they would’ve acted all excited and impressed the same as when I’d catch something when I
was a kid and they’d make a fuss of me as though I’d brought home a pot of gold from the end of a rainbow, even if it was only a slube, and how that’d make me feel about ten feet tall. I wished I could’ve told them – that they were still around to tell. And then I was thinking about why I’d found it now, after all this time, and not before. But it wasn’t such a miracle, I figured. The waters of Eye Lake were falling; I’d been noticing that the past few days – in some places the waterline was almost a foot or two below where it usually was this time of year. I wasn’t exactly sure where the water was going but I had my suspicions. In my experience most water is like a good dog: give it time and it’ll find its way home, back where it belongs. Not like Clarence, who never came home, who never came back.

  But then I got to thinking about that scene in Jaws where the man’s swimming beside a sunken ship, and he comes to a hole in its side and a giant eel tries to bite him and then a head falls out of the hole. And I got to thinking as well about how some folks said it was called Eye Lake because all the people who’d ever drowned in it looked up from its bed with open eyes – Virgil called them ‘the watchers.’ I wasn’t too happy about being in the water anymore then. Not at all. So I grabbed the phantom shad and swam back to the shore.

  Afterwards I walked back down Franklin’s Trail to the Poplars. I’d been living there for two years, in the Tamarack dorm. There were Pine and Birch and Spruce dorms too, but Buddy Bryce, who owns the place, said I could pick whatever one I wanted to stay in and I liked the name Tamarack best, even though strictly treewise I’d probably go for the Spruce or Birch. ‘Take your pick, Eli,’ he said. ‘We won’t be getting visitors any time soon.’

  Last year Buddy told me I should put a sign on the entrance to my dorm, below the Tamarack one, saying ‘Caretaker.’ ‘Kinda make things more official,’ he said. And by things he meant me looking after the place, which is what I did, for a hundred and fifty bucks a month and a place to stay, because number one O’Callaghan Street wasn’t fit for living in. That’s what Buddy told me when he first offered me the job. ‘Your place isn’t fit for living in anymore, Eli,’ is what he said, looking at it kind of disgusted from over the fence where he lives, at number two O’Callaghan Street. He’d been looking at it like that for a few years, as if he’d made everything about his place pretty much perfect – like his garden and his painted fence and his new hot tub – apart from this one thing. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I got an idea that’d maybe help you out a bit.’ Buddy’s the kind of wily old-timer who makes out he’s doing you a favour when really he’s getting something he wants, which in this case was my house pulled down and put out of his sight. But I never did pull it down, which was lucky I guess – especially for an O’Callaghan. My family wasn’t ever considered big on luck.

  On the beach in front of the Hematite Conference Room (there’s a Granite one too, on the other side of the site) Sarah Anderson was taking a walk with her kid, Bobby. He was covered in sheets like a mummy to keep the blackflies off him because he had what she called ‘delicate skin.’ And to be honest I knew how he felt: it was the first week in June and the blackflies were just starting to get real bad – we’d all have delicate skins until we’d been bitten good enough to get used to it. Sometimes you’d even see the moose going nuts with them, running crazy through the bush to keep them off.

  ‘Hey there, Eli,’ she called, waving at me.

  I waved back and then sort of just dawdled about, wondering if she meant for me to come over and talk. She strolled over to me then.

  ‘Jesus, these flies,’ she said. ‘They’re abominable.’ I had to think about that for a minute and then it came to me.

  ‘Like the snowman,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ she said, looking at me confused.

  ‘Abominable,’ I said, ‘like the snowman.’ The truth was I wasn’t so sure what it meant.

  ‘Yes, of course, like the snowman,’ she laughed, as if I’d made a joke and was a real comedian. I felt a bit nervous after that, thinking I’d have to tell another joke to keep things up. Luckily at that moment Bobby came up beside her.

  ‘Hullu, E-lu,’ he said from under the sheet that was wrapped around his face. There was a swarm of bugs around his head, like there is around Pigpen’s head in those Snoopy cartoons. Blackflies aren’t so dumb: they can smell a delicate skin a mile off.

  ‘Hey there,’ I said. ‘These bugs getting you good, eh?’

  Bobby was a nice kid and I felt kind of more comfortable talking to him than Sarah, even though she was nice too.

  ‘What you get?’ Bobby asked – I was still holding my fishing rod, I realized – pulling the sheet off his mouth. Some of the flies flew right in there when he opened it, and he started coughing.

  ‘No luck,’ I told him.

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Not a bite.’ And suddenly I really wanted to tell him about the castle – to pull it out like a magician’s coin from behind his ear so he and Sarah would be impressed. I could feel it pushing up on my tongue just like the castle itself was pushing up against the surface of the lake, wanting to get out of there. But I managed to bite on it. It was like I was hiding a piece of treasure or something and didn’t know quite what to do with it yet.

  A bush plane went buzzing over us and it seemed funny to me how even the human stuff around here was beginning to be like bugs. I was going to try making a joke about it but could see that getting complicated, so I didn’t. And besides, Sarah was staring up at the plane with a strange look on her face – not exactly sad, but not happy either. It was one of Buddy’s planes and that meant Billy was flying it.

  I didn’t know how things stood between her and Billy. They’d been on and off for years. The first time they were on they lived together next door to me at Buddy’s, who’s Billy’s dad. They’d sit out in the garden a lot and sometimes I’d go over there for a few beers. But then she went off to Alberta for a couple of months and when she came back she was pregnant; apparently she’d been pregnant before she left only it didn’t show till she came back. I didn’t see much of them then. She kept herself inside mainly and Billy was out flying his planes most days and Buddy started cutting the grass all the time as if it was growing ten feet every day. He painted the fence three times that summer.

  When Bobby was born that made him the fourth ‘B.’ It was a big joke among the Bryces, that they were all ‘B’: Brenda the mom and Buddy and Billy. They called themselves the Three Bs. It’s what they named Buddy’s tackle and bait store – 3B’s Live Bait and Tackle – as well as his fly-in outfitters’ business – 3B’s Outposts. Buddy owned a bunch of things. He’d sort of started collecting them after the mine closed down, as if he needed something to put his energy into, all the energy he’d put into the mine before. Buddy always liked to be doing stuff.

  They never changed the name to 4B’s though. The next summer I’d sometimes see little Bobby out in his pushchair in the garden and catch Buddy looking at him a bit like he did my house. And then he’d look away and start pruning his apple trees or weeding the flower beds. When Sarah went to Alberta the second time – about three years later – none of the Bs seemed that upset. I thought she’d be gone for good then but I guess things didn’t work out because two years later she was back – in the Bryces’ house for a while and then out at the Poplars, in the Pine dorm. I’d already been out there on my own for a year and was happy enough to get some neighbours. Just the two of them, mind you – Billy stayed put at O’Callaghan Street and only came out for ‘visits.’ The funny thing was it was Buddy who ended up visiting more often. He’d stopped looking at Bobby like he did my house and kept pretending he needed to talk to me about things at the Poplars when really I knew he was just coming to see Bobby.

  ‘What were you using?’ Bobby asked me. I knew he was hoping it was minnows because when I did I’d always keep a few spare for him to play with. I was just the same at his a
ge. I used to fish for them too, with a bent pin and a piece of bacon fat, and I remembered how I was going to show him how to do that. He was about seven and young enough to get plenty excited about it.

  ‘A crank bait,’ I told him.

  ‘What’s that?’

  I took the phantom shad out of my pocket and showed it to him.

  ‘Can I hold it?’

  I gave him the box and he turned it around in his hands. The front of it was see-through and he peered right into its red eyes. He looked pretty damn happy with it and I thought what the hell, I almost lost it today anyways.

  ‘You have it,’ I told him.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Except then I noticed Sarah staring straight at me as if she were trying to talk to me with her eyes. Her lips were all puckered together.

  ‘But I’m sure Eli doesn’t want to give away his special lure, Bobby,’ she said. ‘He’s only trying to be nice – but that’s a special lure and you shouldn’t take it from him.’ She was using that voice that’s really two voices at once, one soothing and friendly for the kid, the other hissed and pissed for you, as if your ears are meant to pick up an extra frequency when you’re older that kids can’t hear, like a bat.

  Bobby and I stood there confused. He wanted the lure a lot and I wanted him to have it.

  ‘You better give it back then,’ Sarah said. Bobby passed it back to me as if he was passing back a big lump of gold. His eyes were wetting up and he didn’t want me to see so he turned away and sulked towards the beach with his cloud of bugs swarming around his head.

  ‘Really, Eli,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t want him playing around with hooks, not without supervision – not without someone to show him.’

  She sounded mad. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You didn’t. Nobody thinks.’